Page 16 of Accidentally Vacationed with an Incubus

“Seriously? You’re not going to let me in?” I jabbed a finger at the useless CCTV camera above the door. “You once let three burglars in because they said you looked cozy! And you can’t deny it—we saw it all on CCTV!”

Dad had insisted on installing security cameras after the house started magicking itself out of the coven’s boundaries. One night, after returning from a family outing in Headless Hollow, the house had practically dragged us upstairs to my room—now the only one with a TV—to proudly show us the footage of how it had welcomed three burly burglars with open arms. The burglars had quickly run from the house when they caught sight of BooDini. Unfortunately, before they fled, the house had helpfully loaded our new 60-inch family TV into the back of their truck.

Mom and Dad had been furious.

BooDini had sulked for days, hiding the CCTV hard drive in shame, just in case it ever accidentally welcomed another set of ill-intentioned guests.

Tears pricked my eyes. I wished the house had never hidden that damn hard drive.

I should still be rotting in jail for what I’d done.

But with no recording of me lifting the hood of my parents’ car and tampering with the brakes, and the fact that—while I never denied doing it—I couldn’t give them a motive, my court-appointed lawyer had argued that, since I didn’t even have a driver’s license, I couldn’t fully understand the mechanics of a car or the consequences of what I’d done.

Criminal negligence.

That was the sentence I was convicted of. But it should have been murder.

Hot tears spilled down my cheeks as I pathetically tried the door one last time, my fingers trembling on the handle.

Nothing.

A shaky breath stuttered in my throat as I finally gave up, my legs giving out beneath me. I sank to the porch floor, wrapping my arms around my knees, burying my face as I muffled my sobs against them.

The porch creaked awkwardly, like the house was unsure what to do with me.

But I couldn’t stop. Couldn’t hold back the grief, the guilt, the weight of everything I had done.

A moment later, a soft fluttering sound stirred beside me. BooDini had settled itself on the floor next to me, its sheeted head resting gently on my shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered again.

The house let out a long, heavy sigh in response. And then, with a slow, aching creak, the front door eased open.

Warmth rushed out to meet me, wrapping around me like an embrace. But the moment I crossed the threshold, something foreign laced the familiar heat of the house. A feeling strong enough to rouse my dormant succubus from Lobato’s magic, just enough to crack an eye open in acknowledgment. Just as quickly as it had come, the sensation faded into nothing, my succubus slinking back into her deep slumber once more.

***

Having issued its forgiveness, the house spent the next hour smothering me with affection. It immediately unpacked my bag, boiled the kettle for tea three separate times, and prepared what could only be described as the bubbliest bubble bath ever.

When the kettle shrieked for the fourth time, I politely excused myself for bed.

Having just got me back, the house wasn’t pleased. BooDini glided over to the clock on the mantel, which rattled dramatically as if to remind me that it was only two in the afternoon.

I yawned, stretched, and mumbled something about a long journey. BooDini drooped its shoulders begrudgingly and escorted me up the stairs.

My room was exactly how I’d left it. Though BooDini had cleared away the teenage mess of cups, plates, and discarded outfits.

The deep forest-green bedspread, adorned with golden moons, suns, and twinkling stars, was stretched neatly across the mattress. The wood-paneled walls were just as I remembered—one still covered floor-to-ceiling in old band posters, a relic of my emo phase, while another held shelves upon shelves of books, their spines a timeline of who I had been at every stage of my life.

My heart swelled with nostalgia as I scanned the titles, smiling when I spotted some of my favorites.

Goosebumps. The Mediator.Twilight!

When not on vacation, my parents used to run the local bookshop in our coven, which had stocked every book a witch could ever want, and as a result, my personal collection had been stacked full.

I reached a shelf purposefully cluttered with teenage debris. The shelf held a very specific selection of books, which my friends and I had passed between ourselves in secrecy.

My forbidden shelf.

---